Scenting the Rain
by Hito
Summary: Colin is remembering. He just doesn't want to. Colin/Ephram.


Disclaimer: None of this is mine. 

Author's Note: Written after seeing 'Colin the Second', so probably doesn't fit with canon at all, by now. 

*

Ephram says that rain doesn't have a smell, that it just brings out the scents of the things it soaks, but Colin can't believe that, plausible as it sounds.

Colin knows the smell of rain, as well as he knows the taste. Colin remembers a lot of things, like flickers of light at the edge of his sight, never within reach when he thinks about it. 

He remembers how to drive, and how to play basketball, how to set the clock on his VCR and the scent of rain — flashing green-gold in the summer, dappling the grass and the sun, or maybe Amy's hair, he can't be sure which. 

He can't be sure that Amy was there that day, that anybody was; he can't be quite sure that there was a day. It could be a freeze-frame of a moment in time: he could have been staring out the window in calculus, or out the window of a car, or at a TV screen. It doesn't matter, because he knows what it would smell like, and because it's a photograph in his head, not shoved into the top drawer of his dresser. 

And there's more. When he's studying with Ephram (something he never forgets to do now, a natural automatic action to go there, like breathing newly built in) the books make sense. He no longer needs to be told basic things, like that England wasn't always an ally, or that it is now, or that Pearl Harbour doesn't have anything to do with oysters. 

He's remembering. He just doesn't want to. 

He stumbles around, prodded along by Amy, and dreads the day he'll remember her. She thinks it will be a wonderful thing, but he knows better. He knows he doesn't love her, doubts he ever did. Colin has the shape of their relationship in his head, a glowing outline and a hazy wash of filling, and it's not bad, but it's not love. It's survival. It's expected. It's happiness, of a sort. 

But things have changed, even if he hasn't, and he hasn't; Colin the Second is a fantasy. A pleasant invention, damage control. The major thing Colin doesn't know, the thing people need him to remember, is the pattern he painted his masks. 

Colin doesn't think anybody knows he wore them, hopes they would have approached him, tried to help before now if they had. 

Because he doesn't know what to do. He just knows that it will be a bad thing if everything returns, because people won't want to know once he remembers. They'll want everything to go back to the way it was. Amy will want to hit reset, turn the clock back those months and the problem is, the thing is that Colin doesn't think it much matters whether his sepia snapshots of Amy are in his mind or in his drawer. They're still fossils. 

Things have changed. The Browns are here now, and people Colin has known all his life are dead. Amy can't turn the clock back on that. 

Colin lets her try, ignores the eyes she's always making, at him and at Ephram, and wishes her mouth didn't set so unhappily when she sees them together. 

He doesn't know what she's so worried about. Probably that Ephram will tell him that something happened between them while he was in the coma, even though it's glaringly obvious, with her miserable silences and her wide-eyed stares, and the tightrope Ephram was walking around him his first few days back at school. 

She can't suspect it means anything that he's more interested in Ephram than he is in her, though it has to hurt. He doesn't think Amy would ever suspect that of anyone, but he knows she'd never imagine it of him. He knows her, now. He doesn't want to hurt her, but he knows he is, and he knows he will. 

He doesn't want to hurt Bright either, hopes he won't be too affected by the ending of this thing with Amy. Colin is looking forward to remembering Bright. He knows Bright's form on court, his space and his rhythm, but he doesn't like to think about it because it's too good and he wants it back. He doesn't want Amy to ruin it. He wishes they could forget the past and start over, like Amy had wanted to do. He hadn't wanted to do it with Amy, but he wants to do it with Bright, because he doesn't think having Bright back would outweigh all the baggage that would come with it. 

Colin sees that same desire for an image of the past in Amy and wishes he felt more concern for her. He's trying, but he can't bring himself to really care. Instead, he avoids her as much as possible, not getting too entangled, not wanting to lead her on. Instead, he lets his feet lead him to Ephram, an automatic thing, not a choice. 

Sometimes when he's looking at Ephram across the table Amy flashes in, yellow and brown and gold, and always so sad, but his image of her is always overshadowed by his image of Ephram, bleak and dark and brighter than the sun, with smiles more awkward than Colin's. 

And sometimes he wonders what his parents would say if he told them about Ephram, about the way he catches Colin staring at him and just stares back, about his mouth, about the way Colin can't stop thinking about it, about the way he can't remember what it's like to kiss and wants to know it new. He'll know what it's like to kiss Ephram, even if Ephram will never let him learn anything else, after he does it. 

He doesn't know his parents. He doesn't know what they'd say. He knows they'll find out, though, because he can't do this alone. 

And he will do it. He'll do it because he sometimes has dreams, dreams where he can't remember where he is or who he is, or how to speak or how to walk. Dreams where he's lost everything of himself, and it takes him too long, when he wakes, to remember that it isn't true, too long for the terror to fade. 

So he has to know, and he will, and he'll remember, and all his attempts to avoid guilt and blame will come to nothing. Colin knows this; he just doesn't know what will come after, because he can't remember things that have never happened before. He doesn't want to remember the past, and he doesn't know if he will want to remember the future. But he will know. 


End file.
